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Title: Presidential instruction from Hussein concerning mass graves in southern Iraq, and how to handle the PR/media fallout.

Short Description: Concerning mass graves found in the south: Check for nuclear radiation, identify bodies, ensure that CNN is the first news agency onsite. Any funerals should have an international impact. Signed by Hussein.

Agency: DIA

Document Date: Feb-01

Document #: ISGZ-2004-00224003

Presumably, this was a plan to blame any mass graves on deaths supposedly caused by depleted-uranium artillery shells used by U.S. forces in the first Gulf War--a favorite talking point of the pro-Saddam left in the 1990s.

More by Stephen F. Hayes

Title: IIS Correspondence for the Iraq Embassy in the Philippines and Iraqi MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs].

Short Description: Various correspondence e.g. visa forms, trade delegations, full reports on the connections between Abu Sayaf and the Qadafi Charity Establishment. Report on a certain individual traveling to Pakistan and involvements with bin Laden.

Agency: DIA

Document Date: Mar-01

Document #: ISGP-2003-00014100

Were biological and chemical agents destroyed by the Iraqi regime? When? How? How many? Does the correspondence between the Iraqi Embassy in Manila and the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs shed any new light on the $25 million ransom that Muammar Qaddafi paid Abu Sayyaf in the summer of 2000, ostensibly to secure the release of 25 Westerners held hostage by the Filipino al Qaeda affiliate? Who traveled to Pakistan? What was his involvement with bin Laden? Did he have anything to do with the Iraqi government?

One would think the U.S. government would want answers to questions like these. But the DIA has been angling since last spring to close the DOCEX program in Doha. According to two Pentagon sources with direct knowledge of the issue, the future of that DOCEX program has been the subject of intense debate in recent weeks. Analysts with knowledge of the project say that the work is not close to being completed and warn that the closure of the DOCEX project there could mean the premature end to an important effort.

Although there are other facilities doing similar work in Baghdad and suburban Washington, the effort in Qatar is the most robust, with approximately 700 translators working in three shifts to review materials. (In a November 21 article in these pages--"Where Are the Pentagon Papers?"--I mistakenly reported that the Qatar effort employed some 200 translators. In fact, there are three shifts, each using 200-plus translators.)

Asked whether the program is on the verge of elimination, a spokesman for the DIA says that the Qatar DOCEX program is like any other program, in that it is subject to annual reviews and may always be defunded from one year to the next.

If anything, given the stakes in Iraq and the potential trove of useful information captured in postwar Iraq, one might expect the Bush administration to allocate additional resources to these document exploitation efforts. Instead they are about to be closed down. Why?